Mia and the Red Right Ankle.

Two weeks ago, I got hit by a 15 year old bus.

Let me back up a bit and explain what that means.

As you may be aware, I recently got on board with my own MySpace page. I dropped some pictures in it and added a few friends and threw a "Decemberists" song on it. "Red Right Ankle" from "Her Majesty, The Decemberists" And I left it be.



I'm not a big "Myspace" type of guy. The people that I want to have contact with, I write emails to or call. Believe it or not, there are actually people from my past that I want to avoid. Ex-girlfriends, lost friends, people that I hurt, people that hurt me. I know they can google me and find my Playground profile page. I'm cool with that. That's a passive shingle, hung out to advertise me and where I am. It doesn't offer actual contact. (I even work to NOT put my own name on my blog to keep that from being Google-searchable.)

Confident that my meager little Myspace page would see very little traffic, you can imagine my horror and anxiety, when Mia found me and asked to "befriend" me. Maybe you've heard me mention Mia before. If you were in "Fugue" with me last summer, you might remember me talking about her on the day that we told stories about "My Biggest Regret." This is my first reference to her on my blog. Perhaps I should give a little backstory.

I met Mia in my first week of college. It was in the Greenroom for the theater department. Wednesday night of my first week there. Theater Production class, level 1. Wednesday nights, all of the theater dept. would take Prod. to work on sets and costumes for the upcoming mainstage shows. I entered the room with my friend, Alan, and Mia was in the back of the room, talking to her friend Stephanie. (Strange, that I can still remember seeing her for the first time, 15 years later.) I stopped in my tracks and said, "Who IS that girl?"

Kevin, the old soul of the department, answered, "That's Mia. She's a junior. She's an actress in the department. Why?"

"Because I think I'm supposed to be with her." I said. Unable to look away from her.

"Good Luck," he said, unimpressed, "She just ended a three year engagement to a guy in the military. She's probably pretty broken up about it."

"We'll just see about that," I said.

I would like to think that I went up to her and announced my intentions of wooing her, right then and there. But I didn't. That's not my style. Instead, I probably asked quietly to be assigned to whatever chore she was doing, so that I could get to know her better. That began my Theater Prod career, working in the costume shop.

Mia was 21 years old, back then. Two years older than me. She had piercing blue eyes and long, straight blonde hair. Her skin was pale, white and she was thin and definitively feminine. She was all curves and long arms and legs and she had the rugged, undeniable physicality of a young mare. She was also a strange mix of preternatural grace and unpredictable klutz. You would never know if she was going to make an amazing, beautiful entrance or trip, pull down a buffet tablecloth, as she fell. She kept things pretty lively.

It was a slow courtship. She was pretty fragile from her breakup. But she was open to my friendship. We would call each other on the phones in our dorm rooms, point out a standup comedy show on tv and watch it together, laughing at the jokes over the phone. We took long walks around campus together. She burned me cassettes of music. (Yeah, cassettes. It was the 90's.) We loaned each other books. We ate chinese together, at the crappy off-campus restaurant. We performed together in my first show in college. "Alice in Wonderland." I was the Mad Hatter. She was the March Hare. I think I have a picture of that show, in my books, at home.

Over time, with patience and confidence, she lowered her defenses and we transitioned easily from friends to a dating couple. I can remember our first kiss. My dorm room. Late at night. Laying together, watching tv and talking, our faces right by each other and she leaned over to me and we kissed softly and for a long time. It was lovely and sublime. I still remember that kiss, 15 years later.

Mia was older than me. She was more experienced, intimately, than I was. As things slowly progressed between us, she taught me things that I still remember and use today. She got me used to the idea of being alone and naked with a girl. She taught me how to give and receive and effortlessly shift from one to another. That it was okay to ask for something from your partner, if you wanted it. She taught me the touches and the kisses that pleasured a woman. I was nearly a novice when I met her and she was a patient, caring teacher. Maybe that was her way of giving back to me for being so patient with her, when she needed time.

We dated for the last half of my freshman year. For the holidays, we went home and met each others families. I instantly loved her dad. He built his own house out in the country. I loved visiting it. (I remember exactly where it is, back in Louisville. I could drive you there tomorrow, if I needed to.) My mom loved Mia too. They would actually talk and were friendly with each other. Which was something that my mom never did with my girlfriends, back then. We both went into my sophomore year and her senior year, full of promise and excitement to begin the school year as a couple.

In the beginning of that year, things were as good as they could've been. People knew who we were. They knew we were a couple. They treated us like a couple. It just felt right. We got cast in shows easily, very early on. We even worked together at a local Balloon Delivery company, doing costumed balloon deliveries together. She would drive and I would show up in the gorilla costume. Or I would drive and she would show up in the Playboy bunny costume. Silly times. Happy times.

I can still remember cold, spring nights, staying in her dorm room until the latest possible moments and then walking back to my own dorm room, wrapped up in one of her blankets that she'd loaned me. I took it so that I could still smell her, back in my own room. We were as close as two young people in love could've been. We had potential to be together, as a strong, stable couple for the rest of our lives. That was a very real possibility. We talked about it often, preparing ourselves for that reality.

I know what went wrong.
I know why that didn't happen.
I can see the divergence from that path to the path that we took.

Because I was the one who made it happen.

This is why I told this story as "My Biggest Regret" at Fugue rehearsal.

It's my fault that it's gone.

Shortly after the beginning of my sophomore year, I moved into a house, off campus with the theater technicians, in the department. Great guys, all of them. With a rough, tough demeanor that involved late night drinking, sleeping late, barely doing the homework, but rehearsing show after show and building set after set. The two "captains" of that theater house, which we dubbed "The Maze" because of it's seemingly random hallways throughout the refabbed house, were Kevin and Rob. Two guys who had a big influence on me. To a lesser extent, the younger guys in the house had my ear, as well. We ate together. Worked together. Hung out together. Hit parties together. As close as hetero boys could get.

Rob and Kevin latched onto an idea very early on that began as a "whisper campaign" at parties and in private talks. Their central thesis was, that I was a sophomore. Mia was a senior, about to graduate. Logically, her next step was to leave KY and go out into the world to begin auditioning and beginning her career. With a boyfriend, two years away from graduation, she would hold herself back, hanging out in Ky, waiting for me. And she would lose two critical years of the first part of her career. She might not ever recover from it. She might not have a career, after all, if she waited for me. Worse than that, they explained that it was selfish and cruel of me to hold onto her. To hold her back. I should know better. I should man up and do what needed to be done. If I didn't break up with her, I would be ruining her life.

Initially, I fought all of this off with the responses that you're probably thinking of, on your own, right now. Nothing is certain. Two years isn't that long of a time, after all. That she and I will be better able to seek out work together, as a team, than we can, alone. That it was none of their business. That it was up to her and I.

The crack in that shell of defenses, though was shame and fear. The thing that I couldn't bear was the thought that I was being selfish and that I was hurting the woman that I loved. Nothing scared me more. And as time passed and the "whisper campaign" continued, my defences wore down and I began to understand their rationale. I came around to their way of thinking. My good instinct to protect her got twisted and I became convinced that the person I needed to protect her from, was me.

So, I put up walls. I started putting distance between us. I stopped returning calls. And as the school year ended and we began focusing on the summer, I began putting steps in place to separate the two of us.

Of course, she immediately knew something was going on. And she tried to understand it or identify it, in her own, sweet ways. But I waved off her concerns, certain that i was doing the right thing. Every day, I got a little farther away from her, while I was physically right there, next to her.

We worked a summer camp together. Her summer camp. She worked it every summer. And that summer, we worked it together. Herding kids all summer, kept us both busy. We would occasionally sneak away from our kids, out into the woods for a romantic interlude. But they became fewer and far between.

There were tears. And fights. She would righteously fight me and challenge me for information. For clarification. For reassurance. And I would deny her, over and over again. I often times would deny that anything was happening at all and run away from the fights. Lord, we were both hurting so, so much. We both wanted the same thing, to be together. But I was crippled by a misinformed sense of obligation and duty and worse of all, I wasn't sharing any of this with her. I was strangling the relationship, for reasons only I could understand.

The last time I saw her, as my girlfriend, was Thanksgiving, 1995. She came to my house to have dinner with my family. I met her at the end of the driveway and told her that I didn't want her to come in. That this was the last time we would see each other. She sat in her car and cried and looked at me and said, "Why? Why? I don't understand why you are doing this. What has happened between us?" and I asked her to leave and I turned my back on her and walked to the house, openly crying, myself. She did. She left. I could hear her speed off. I got to my backyard and stood out in the cold, night, looking up at the stars and wondering if I was doing the right thing or not. I was hurting so, so much. I just didn't see the simple solution, in front of me.

Standing there, in the backyard, I stepped off of "The Way Things Should Be" and stepped onto "The Way That Things Will Be From Now On". That was the point where the two paths separated and we went down the absolute wrong one. The point where everything was lost.



When I got back to school, after the Thanksgiving break, I began a long, slow, miserable meltdown. I stopped going to classes. I failed them, left and right. I threw myself into shows and roles. I was shredded, emotionally, and as it turns out, an actor that devastated is interesting to watch onstage. Even as my personal life was crumbling around me, I was getting more and more popular in shows and at parties. I began drinking for the first time. I also began working through a serious addiction to the dance department. I bedded dancer after dancer. By the end of my junior year, I had doubled the number of people that I'd slept with, in my entire life. I cut a wide swath through the department, sleeping with anyone who would let me. I had no idea that I was trying to fill a giant emotional hole with something that would never fill it.

Eventually, I dropped out of college. My college advisor and mentor died of cancer and that was pretty much it for me. I worked long hours at a video store and played video games. I discovered weed and acid and mushrooms and spent as much of my time, as fucked up as I possibly could've been. I had my phone disconnected. I ate shitty food and put on weight. And still, broken girl after broken girl would climb into my bed, find out how hollowed out I was and then they would move on.

In what would've been the year after my senior year, I was asked to speak at the memorial for my dead professor. I was strung out, most of the time, but I got my shit together long enough to give a loving tribute to him. I have a videotape of the eulogy that I gave for him. I still think that was one of the only, truly good things that I've done in my life. It was a beautiful eulogy.

Mia was there.

She came back from Pennsylvania to see the memorial for our mutual teacher and friend. It was the first time that I'd seen her since the breakup. And I avoided her as much as possible. I was a bloated, strung-out, long-haired, weed and booze addict. I wasn't aware of how bad things had gotten, until I saw her and remembered who I was, before I lost her. After I spoke at the memorial, I walked out the back of the theater and went to my local bar and began drinking, almost immediately, telling the story to anyone who would listen.

After the memorial, there was a reception.
After the reception, the theater people came to the bar.

Mia came with them.

She found me in a booth and slid into the opposite side of the booth, painfully aware of the vast differences between the person she'd lost and the person who was sitting across from her. I was lost. I had no plans. I was directionless. I was not in school anymore, but I was still in my college town. I had no prospects.

She had a wedding ring.

I looked at it and any hope I had of anything ever being right in my world again, absolutely fell apart. I started laughing and crying at the same time. The dam broke and the words started to fall out of me. She asked a few questions, at first, but after a bit, she just sat there, looking at me, while I told her everything. Everything. The breakup and beyond. The whole, ugly tale. I didn't put any blame on her. How could I? It was entirely my fault. I couldn't draw the connections then, between the breakup and the wreckage that I'd become, but I can see it right now. A direct line from losing her to losing myself.

She asked me to walk her to her car. I settled my tab and staggered out of the bar, still wearing my suit from the memorial. My long, greasy hair slipped out of the ponytail and hung in my face. I was literally hiding behind my hair. We walked for a bit, not talking too much. Finally, I asked her about the ring and she said that she was engaged now. Soon to be married. To a good man. A guy she met in her first acting gig out of college. He loved her to death and they'd dated for a year or so, before he proposed and she'd accepted. And that's where we were.

Who knows if there was a chance that she could've broken the engagement with him and been with me. The man that was standing next to her didn't look like a winning candidate. I was as low as I'd ever been in my life. And I'm sure that it made the new husband look that much better. Beyond that, she carried her own pain and regret from the breakup. I'm sure that there were hard feelings still. I knew then, that she couldn't leave her new life behind to be with me, even if I'd asked. So I didn't ask.

I do remember that she said, "I wish you'd told me what you were doing. I wish you didn't keep it from me. If I'd known what you were doing, I would've told you that it was my choice to be with you. That I didn't care about starting my career, right then and there. That I would've waited for you and we would've done it together. It would've worked out for us both." She was so tender with me. But it was the worst possible thing that she could've said. It was confirmation of the reality of what I'd feared. With the best intentions, I'd fucked up my life and my future and the life that I would've wanted to live with her had been a possibility. A certainty. And it was irreparably gone. Absolutely lost.

She got in her car and drove off. That was the last time I saw her. That was the summer of 1995. 13 years ago.

Somehow, I got home and went to bed.
Somehow, I got up the next day and made it in to work.
Somehow, I got through that week, without destroying my liver.
Somehow, I got past that month, without starving to death or passing out in the snow.
Somehow, I got through the next month and even got a contract working at a pretty reputable children's theater.
Somehow, I got to the end of that contract and rented a house and got a job at a security company.
Somehow, I made my way up the ranks of that company and saved up enough cash to move to Chicago. That was in October, 2000.

Sure, I used to Google her, trying to keep up with her career. Once, I found a picture of her in the cast of a murder-mystery show in PA and I scanned the picture for a clue about which guy was the husband. I never figured it out. I can't remember when I let her go and stopped looking for her and stopped asking people about her, but eventually I did. I healed up some of the scars that were left on me. I made new and more interesting mistakes in relationships and one day, in a Fugue rehearsal I told the whole story, realizing that it had been years since anyone had heard all of that stuff. The Fugue cast was supportive and listened to the whole terrible tragedy and knew instantly how deeply personal the shame and guilt was. Afterwards, they hugged me and supported me. It was just one of those sorts of rehearsals, I guess.

You would think that re-hashing that stuff would've brought her back to mind. I would've googled her again or looked for new information, but I didn't. I was dating someone else and that was my focus and I had pretty much let go of Mia entirely.

And then I got the Myspace Friend Request from her two weeks ago.

I was already feeling pretty fragile lately. And I accepted the Friend request, without looking to see who it was. I got a simultaneous request from her theater company (ran by her and her husband) and accepted that too, before I knew what I was doing. Once I clicked on her Myspace page and realized who and what that was, I absolutely fell apart.

Boom. Ran over by a bus that I'd set in motion, 15 years ago.

They're still married. 11 years now. It'll be 12, this October. She's back in Ky, living with her family and him... and her two kids. A boy and a girl. I started to see the pictures of them and I lost my shit. Crazy, hurtful, hoarse-cries of fresh despair erupted out of me. Luckily, no one was home. I couldn't control myself anyways, if they were. I just fell apart, there in my office. An absolute wreck.

On Itunes, the song "Red Right Ankle" was on repeat and I let it play, one song in an endless loop, for three hours and I looked at picture after picture from their marriage and the parenting of their children. I saw christmas pictures. Presents being unwrappd. Kids freaking out of toys. I saw Halloween pictures of her son as Spiderman and her daughter as a princess. She, herself, wore devil horns and smiled at the camera, devilishly. I saw picnic pictures of the kids with her parents. There was her dad. I knew and liked that guy. And in the pictures, he is happily holding his grand-daughter. Beautiful. I saw shows and costumes and sets and vacations and camping trips and birthday cakes and first days of school and breakfasts and school pageants. Over 300 pictures in all.

Pictures of a life that was supposed to be mine. Holidays that I was supposed to celebrate. Children that I was supposed to parent. A life with her, as wife, lover, partner and mother, that he got to have with her. A life that I would never have. I couldn't help but think that some guy was living the life that I was supposed to have. That the wrong guy was doing the job.

He has a web presence on the page, too. They share it and as deeply as I dipped into the pictures, I poured over his writings too. He has self-doubts like anyone does. He has a history of bi-polar stuff in his past. And he has alcoholism in his family history. And he is getting fatter, as he gets older. And he fears that he can't provide for his wife and kids. They're all three living in a converted garage at her parents house and have been for the last five years. She works in a Starbucks to help make ends meet. He's in nursing school, but is failing her classes.

As much as they love each other and their family, there are some sacrifices being made too. I couldn't help but wonder if I would be making those sacrifices too, to be with her. To be a parent with her. Or would our lives be different? Better?

She and I planned to move to Chicago, together. We both wanted to pursue acting and improv and comedy training here. I can't help but think that my life would be very similar to what it is now, only she would be there to share it with me. And the painful string of failed relationships that I've had from the day that she drove off my parents house, never would've happened. I wouldn't be as hard and and as crippled as I am now. I would've been in a singular, stable, loving relationship for 15 years now. A different man than I am now. I think a better man than I am now.

Well, of course, thinking all of this, fucked me up for a few days. For three or four nights in a row, I would go to my computer, put that song "Red Right Ankle" on repeat (it was the soundtrack for this painful, new experience) and look through those pictures, examining not the kids or her, but the living space that they were in. The books on the bookshelves. The candles on the table. The layout of the room. Where the door is. Where the bed is. Where they ate meals. The details that the pictures showed, which made up the rest of the reality of their life.

I don't think I would've done this, if I hadn't been so sure that it was where I was supposed to be, but just wasn't.

I was, of course, freshly shocked and horrified, when she made a comment on my page.

"So... how the hell are ya?"

I sat on it for two days before I attempted a response. The message that I sent her was a carefully contructed effort at diplomacy. I didn't know if the husband would see it first. So, I kept it light and breezy. I talked about Chicago, Maggie, theater, comedy, the upcoming tours and whatnot. I included a short paragraph about how I saw the kids in the pics and that they were beautiful and how happy and proud I was for her. I asked her to shoot me a message back. To let me know how she was doing and what she was up to. I wished her well. I sent the message. And waited for her response.

Two days after I sent it, with no response, I included a short comment on her page, letting her know that I had answered her in a short message and not a comment, but I wanted to let her know, in case she didn't check them regularly.

And a week went by, without a response.
Then another week went by. Still no response.

I stopped listening to "Red Right Ankle" on repeat.
I stopped checking my Myspace page for her response.

Every horrible scenario that I imagined, never happened.
Every conversation that I dreaded, never ocurred.
Every regret that I was ready to re-examine and lay out, weren't called for.

And I moved on.



It's now weeks later and I'm not looking for a response from her anymore. As much as it hurt, that first night to have contact with her again. As much as it tore me apart to see her as a happy, beautiful, loving mother, even that feels distant and removed. Abstract. Like a concept for a story idea that someone told me once and less like "the path that I should've gone down, but didn't". It feels removed.

It got a little hairy there, in the beginning. I did get obsessed. I did get ship-wrecked by things I couldn't have seen coming. I have a reminder that there are parts of me, hidden in the dark corners, that are still pulsing with regret, 15 years after their terrible births. That I have held onto regrets, long after they could've been let go of. I suppose you could say that I have unresolved issues, here.

At the same time, I am aware, standing on this side of that experience, that things aren't always as bad as you can imagine them getting. As bad as I thought it would've been, it wasn't that bad. As bad as I hurt, that first night, I'm better now. If I were to have contact with her, in some future date, I think I'll be less interested in exploring my shame and regrets. I'll be less interested in comparing my life now, with my fictional life that could've been. I'll be better able to handle contact with her and not be shattered by the process.

In fact, I'm recording all of this here, as a way of putting it in a nicely designed, lovingly-constructed box and letting it all that go. The weight of carrying around who I was and what I did is lessened by the sharing of the tale. Sure, I was young and dumb in college. I "good-intentioned" myself out of something really good. Mistakes were made. As they often are done, by the young and inexperienced. Discussing blame and accountability and reasons, for injuries sustained 15 years ago is time, breath and energy wasted.

I am letting it go.
I am letting her go.

Gone.

Cheers,
Mr.B


Mia. Summer, 2007.